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Children and Dangerous Sport and Recreation

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... What prudence requires in terms of childhood participation, however, is a complex issue. Russell (2007) explores the value of risk and dangerous sport during childhood, citing gymnastics and American Football, while discussing sports that might foster those abilities and virtues thought necessary to flourish in adulthood. Such activities may aid the development of physical courage and enable us to assess our own limits, as well as the environment around us. ...
... These lines of argument, however, need not contend that 'anything goes' with regard to risk. Russell (2007) explores the idea of thresholds with regard to the level of risk that might be acceptable, noting chance of success and the risk of serious injury as relevant criteria. Outside of childhood Brink also suggests that prudence can be reconciled with authenticity, where being authentic means living in line with one's values. ...
... As a way of further exploring this point, it is worthwhile referring back to Russell (2007) and his discussion of opportunities for self-affirmation for children participating in risky and dangerous sports. Russell claims that extreme and dangerous sports have special value because they 'challenge us to push the boundaries of who we are by extending in certain ways the physical, emotional, and intellectual limits of our finite, embodied selves. ...
Article
Participation in sport, in particular intensive elite sport may be associated with shorter and longer term risks to health. Elite sport participation might also be associated with a narrow focus, to the detriment of developing in other ways, perhaps with regard to friendships or education. This paper explores the issues surrounding prudence and sport. It begins by examining two central aspects of the rationale for prudential engagement with sport and physical activity. (1) The contention that each stage of life counts equally in assessing well-being over a life; and (2) The need to detach from present concerns and commitments to maintain a range of options from which to pursue well-being in the future. These aspects of a prudential athletic lifestyle, along with the contention that prudence can be defended in terms of rationality are explored and challenged. These challenges are not found to be persuasive in terms of abandoning altogether the notion that a prudent engagement with sports and physical activity is a rational one. Stronger objections to the current understanding of the recommendations of prudence are found upon examination of Griffin’s theory of well-being. The fact that values on a list such as Griffin’s might be realised in multiple ways casts doubt on the contention that certain choices now will necessarily risk future well-being. Second, Griffin’s understanding of the relationship between health and well-being (health as a means to well-being) throws into doubt common interpretations of harms to health and their impact upon well-being. Accepting that there are multiple ways in which to fulfil those values constitutive of well-being, and that health is a purely instrumental good, offers a strong challenge to construing certain choices in the sports and exercise domain as imprudent and ultimately detrimental to well-being.
... However, Russell argues that dangerous sport provides a different sort of self-affirmation as it is an 'opportunity for confronting and pressing beyond certain apparent limits of personal, and indeed human, physical and psychological capacities in ways not afforded' by non-dangerous activity (Russell 2005, 2). Russell (2007) also argues that an individual has a better chance of attaining self-affirmation if we begin a sport in childhood i.e. the younger we begin a sport, the better we will be at it (cf. Findler 2015). ...
... Donnelly (1988) applies a similar argument to boxing. 6. MMA is arguably in the best interests of the few children who gain self-affirmation from the activity (Russell 2007(Russell , 2005. 7. If the harms of children's MMA outweigh the benefits, then it is not in the children's best interests. ...
Article
Cage-Fighting, also known as Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), is a combat sport that allows participants to grapple, punch, kick, elbow and knee—a combination of elements from many martial arts. While it is debatable whether adults ought to be free to engage in risky sports such as MMA, the question of whether children ought to partake in MMA is even more fraught. This is for two reasons. Firstly, MMA is riskier for children than adults due to their very vulnerable brains and undeveloped and fragile skeletal structure. Secondly, as most children will not have the capacity to consent to engaging in MMA, the decision falls to the parents or guardians. Hence, there is a tension between the parental right to make decisions on behalf of a child and the right of the child to be protected from harm. This paper begins by assessing the empirical evidence concerning the harms and benefits of kid’s MMA, and note the potential for the evidence to be value-laden. We assess the risk associated with kid’s MMA using a rubric that considers both the likelihood and severity of harm. Despite the lack of conclusive empirical evidence, we consider the harm associated with kid’s MMA to be substantial. The paper then outlines the tension between parental autonomy and a child’s right to be protected from harm. After considering the frameworks of best interests, the zone of parental discretion and a child’s right to an open future, we conclude that parents should be able to allow their children to participate in MMA—that kid’s MMA should not be banned.
... Another argument against removing boxing from the YOG's Competitive Program is based on the value that dangerous athletic activities have for children. John Russell (2007) contends that dangerous athletic activities, including boxing, are valuable because they help children develop not only personal health, safety, and good decision-making, traits related to personal independence and responsibility, but also character virtues like courage, perseverance, and self-sufficiency, which are constitutive of wellfunctioning, rational people. He also contends that dangerous athletic activities are uniquely valuable for children because they provide opportunities for what he terms "self-affirmation," which refers to "pressing individual boundaries and thus defining new self-understandings and conceptions of the self" (p. ...
... 183). Russell's (2007) position is obviously at odd with the soft paternalism mentioned above, "which holds that we are entitled to interfere with incompetent individuals [and children in particular] for their own good, especially if their behavior poses an unnecessary danger to themselves" (p. 183). ...
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Boxing has been featured in the Competitive Program of the Youth Olympic Games (YOG) since the event was inaugurated in Singapore in 2010. This paper examines whether boxing is a suitable sport to advance the professed goals of the YOG. It concludes that it is not, and that it should be removed from the YOG's Competitive Program. One line of argument focuses on the questionable impact of boxing on the health of young athletes. In this regard, issues of autonomy, consent, and paternalism are discussed in relation to the health of these athletes. A second line of argument focuses on the central purpose of boxing and its relation to Olympism. The paper suggests that, in light of the sport's moral failings, the discontinuation of boxing would better align the YOG with the values of Olympism.
... Russell defined a dangerous sport as 'one that involves activity that itself creates a significant risk of loss of, or serious impairment to, some basic capacity for human functioning'. 25 26 Russell articulated two main arguments for the value of dangerous sports. The first argument posits that 'physical risk is essential to the healthy development of a variety of important physical virtues' and that removing all risks from a child's environment would leave them unprepared to confront physical risks and unable to make sound judgements about risks in their adult lives. ...
... Russell holds the view that the wishes of the child and parents should be strong considerations in whether any particular 'dangerous' activity is suitable for, or acceptable to, the child. 26 What is known about the injury risks of rugby to children and youth? ...
... Russell defined a dangerous sport as 'one that involves activity that itself creates a significant risk of loss of, or serious impairment to, some basic capacity for human functioning'. 25 26 Russell articulated two main arguments for the value of dangerous sports. The first argument posits that 'physical risk is essential to the healthy development of a variety of important physical virtues' and that removing all risks from a child's environment would leave them unprepared to confront physical risks and unable to make sound judgements about risks in their adult lives. ...
... Russell holds the view that the wishes of the child and parents should be strong considerations in whether any particular 'dangerous' activity is suitable for, or acceptable to, the child. 26 What is known about the injury risks of rugby to children and youth? ...
Article
A clash of values has been identified between those who assert that: 1. all childhood injuries, regardless of origin, are inherently undesirable and should be prevented and; 2. those who believe that some measure of injury to children is an acceptable compromise for the physical benefits associated with physical activity and the development of abilities to appraise and deal with risks. A debate regarding whether the tackles and collisions permitted in schools’ rugby represent acceptable risks, and what steps should be taken if they do not, exemplifies the issue. Questions regarding the magnitude of injury risks in sport are issues of fact and can be quantified via the results of injury surveillance studies. Risks are neither high nor low in isolation; they are relatively high or low with reference to other activities or across groups participating in an activity. Issues of the acceptability of a given degree of risk are value dependent. Research regarding perceptions of risk reveals wide variations in the degree of risk people view as acceptable. Factors impacting on risk perception include whether the risks are well known and understood, whether they are ‘dread’ risks and the degree to which people undertake the risks voluntarily and feel they have control over them. Based on the evidence currently available, the risks to children playing rugby do not appear to be inordinately high compared with those in a range of other childhood sports and activities, but better comparative information is urgently needed. Further evidence, however, should not necessarily be expected to result in the resolution of acceptable risk debates—pre-existing values shape our perspectives on whether new evidence is relevant, valid and reliable.
... By positioning my 'scales of ignorance' framework within something analogous to John Rawls 'original position' (Rawls 1971(Rawls , 1999, I also aim to bridge a critical gap between inside-out approaches to categorization such as Martínková and Parry's that takes as its starting point the structures of sport itself, and outside-in approaches such as Loland's that takes as its starting point the structures of society, population groups or individual athletes. This is significant because in sport and society, exposure to risk of harm is to some degree inevitable, even desirable, a position most forcefully articulated by John S. Russell (2005Russell ( , 2007. I respond to Russell's supposed critique of harm mitigation in the second half of the paper. ...
... That is, children should be given opportunities to fulfill and increase their expanding autonomy. John S. Russell (2007) puts it this way: 'Generally, [children's wishes to] and striving to test or "to try on" adult responsibilities and capacities is to be encouraged because it is part of learning to be and become an adult' (185). That is why it is paramount that adults model autonomy and be willing to allow, and design practices that encourage, young athletes to make rules and decisions for themselves when they have the capacity to do so (Schapiro 1999, 736). ...
Article
Organized youth sport has become a prominent activity in Western societies, one around which myriad families structure their daily lives. Despite its popularity, or rather because of it, youth sport is besotted with complex problems. One distinctive set of problems pertains to children’s opportunities to benefit from engagement in sport. Such problems require a reflection on the conditions of justice. The goal of this paper is to explore ethical guidelines to make youth sport more just. The paper begins by characterizing childhood, youth, and youth sport. Then, it articulates considerations of justice in youth sport. Together, these sections provide a basis to formulate the general features of a just youth sport. What emerges is a vision of youth sport that the adults involved in it should emphasize and implement if their young charges, and youth sport, are to flourish, as well as a novel approach to formulating and justifying normative criteria to make youth sport more just.
... Russell [40] expands on this, believing physical risk to contribute an important value to a child's wellbeing, a belief stemmed from two points. Firstly, experiences of risks aid a healthy development through preparation for future physical endeavours and secondly, how a fundamental part of childhood is testing one's physical capabilities, aiding the child to discover 'who they are' [41]. ...
Article
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The purpose of this study was to explore the understandings and perceptions of risk related to brain trauma amongst parents of children that play contact rugby. A qualitative approach was taken, using semi-structured interviews with 7 mothers and 27 fathers of children that participate in contact rugby. A thematic analysis of data suggests that parents used two primary cognitive strategies to process the risk they consented to with their children’s participation in rugby; (1) minimalizing rugby risk to be equivalent to less injurious sports; and (2) elevating physical and social advantages above what they think other sports are capable of providing. From the findings it is suggested that parents who permit their children to play contact rugby are both aware of the high risks of injury in the sport, but simultaneously utilize two cognitive distortion techniques to rectify the dissonance caused between their choice to have their children play, and the salient number of concussions they observe. These results suggest that it will take properly informed consent, inclusive of concussion rates compared to other sports, in order to reduce cognitive distortion and effectively communicate risks associated with participation in contact rugby.
... Interagency Development and Peace good health, mental health and such game as United Nation playing for the task force, all forms of social entertainment, and sports activities, organized or competitive games the partnership is defined local sports and games. Similarly, the definition of "Sport for Development and Peace International Working Group Sports unity, solidarity and a powerful tool to promote economic and social development for the African Union Sports Policy Framework (Russell, 2007). ...
Article
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The study aimed to examine the Teacher's motivation and encouragement towards their children to participate in physical activities. the teachers who have children studying in the higher secondary schools in Bannu District, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan was the population of the study. This study was focused to analyze the views of teachers regarding motivation and encouragement towards their children to participate in physical activities to find out the most dominant motives that persuade parents to encourage their children to participate in sports activities. It has been concluded that teachers’ involvement in sports in terms of their attitude, perception and motives has paramount significance in motivating children towards participation in sports. Researchers can investigate the motives among the teachers in other provinces of the country and for this purpose comparison of the motives can be done.
... An approach in which body and movement become keystones in all activities, according to anembodiment theory in which action and cognition are parts of a single and unitary intelligent process of adaptation and learning (Scott e al. 2017). The teachers also seem to be open to the pedagogy of risk (Lang, 1998;Russel, 2007), to support children in their proximal development zone (Vygotskij, 1974) in order to support the self-perception and self-efficacy: a sense of the limit and responsibility, risk as a resource to help and cooperate (peer teaching), the cognitive function of control and inhibition. Children do exactly what their body allow them to do, they never risk beyond the possible if they are not stressed by adults. ...
Article
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MoVimparois a MEMO (Modena Educational Multicenter "Sergio Neri") website. Memo is a structure of the Educational Services Sector of the Municipality of Modena, recognized as a Service and Consultancy Center for the educational infancy institutions of Emilia Romagna Region (DGR n.262/2010 as amended by DGR n.2185/2010). This educational multicenter is also accredited by the Ministry of Education (MIUR) for the training of school staff, refers to the Ministerial Directive n.170/2016. This article has analyzed seventy-tree educational projects through the narrative synthesis approach, derived from the qualitative analysis of the focus group reports (Oprandi, 2001; Cataldi, 2009), and based on the following steps: a) determination of the aim-extrapolation of general didactic guidelines useful to outline applicable good practices for an educational project in outdoor education; b) identification of the relevant parts of the projects analyzed with respect to the purpose of the research; c) classification of categories referring to the relevant parts of the text; d) identification of the characteristic elements of the individual categories; e) summary of good educational practices. The teachers have shown that they know how to get involved and measure themselves with the daily work tools that they have highlighted in four main elements: a) teaching approach, b) methodology, c) characteristics of the setting, d) partnership. These four elements, deduced from the project's analysis, underline an educational approach centered on the child and on his needs. Active and open didactics, spaces prepared in structured and unstructured forms, various materials, are always organized and combined by the adult to give space to the spontaneous action of the child. In this sense, outdoor education represents a winning strategy for teachers, thanks to its great operational adaptability of teaching. Each teacher, observing their children, can carry out educational projects appropriate to his/her school, to the spaces and times available, being able to give children great operational freedom without losing sight of the educational objectives of the school.
... One venue for this might be outdoor and adventurous activities and sports, including those practised by children and youth, especially in educational situations (see, e.g. Breivik 2010b; Brymer and Oades 2009;Russell 2007). However, even in our safetified societies (see Martínková and Parry 2016, 4), it is impossible absolutely to eradicate danger from our ordinary daily life, including school, work, recreation and sports-we are more or less continuously at risk of injury from one source or another. ...
... Although children may not take on certain risks, due to age and development, they may still find meaning from dangerous sport. In fact, Russell (2007) argues that because of the "physical danger" some sports "have special value because they challenge us to push the boundaries of who we are by extending in certain ways the physical, emotional, and intellectual limits of our finite, embodied selves," and that young participants benefit from partaking in some level of risk (p. 181). ...
Article
Recently, many parents, sportswriters, and social critics have expressed concern for young athletes being given participation trophies. They claim that it fosters a sense of entitlement and teaches youngsters that they do not need to earn rewards. I argue that youth sport participants should not be rewarded only for participation, but that they should be given opportunities for earing awards beyond mere victory. This is because a variety of values, such as symbolic meaning, challenge and risk, aesthetics, and high-quality relationships with teammates and opponents, deserve reward as well. I conclude that coaches and organizers should find ways to given tokens to most youth sport participants for achieving, or striving to achieve, these alternate values. © 2018, Universidad Catolica San Antonio Murcia. All rights reserved.
... So much so that, on the one hand, Richard Louv (2005) -author of the bestseller The Last Child in the Woods -claims that a generation is growing up for which nature is no longer the "natural environment" of experimentation and growth, but something exotic and alien, hostile and dangerous. On the other, J. S. Russell emphasises that the elimination of risk from childhood experience is a principle which in itself is anti-educational (Russell, 2007). This sort of perceptive isolation in which the child is confined through educational practices performed mainly indoors is starting to show some timid signs of abating. ...
Article
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In the growth process children are influenced not only by models embodied by reference adults and transmitted by formal education agencies, but also – and, one might say, especially – by those models that the media propose. In particular, children read themselves, amplify their experiences, and open themselves to the possible, through the stories that the media offer.While, nowadays, tv series as Peppa Pig, Teletubbies, Dora the Explorer or Bo on the Go! merely confirm adult expectations, confining children within models that act as ‘cages’ from which it is difficult to escape, Masha and the Bear breaks the rules and undermines traditional education systems. Like the outdoor education theories, and like the educational experiments related to them, Masha and the Bear also actively participates in the endeavour of educational renewal now in progress. And it does so on the basis of a privileged context: narrative imagery.
... However, in order to perform such an 'educational' purpose, real-life dangerous combat must be modified to become safer, because we do not want our children or indeed ourselves to risk our lives in free-time educational activities that are supposed to be educational and safe [e.g. Russell 2007]. ...
Article
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This paper presents the paradox of martial arts: martial arts are supposed to be safe educational activities, but they include combat that itself is usually understood as dangerous activity. The nature of combat within martial arts is explored, so that it is clear to what extent it has been changed, i.e. safetified and therefore made not efficient. This is important for the participants so that they are not confused about what activity they are doing, especially if their motivation for engagement in martial arts is self-defence.
... As noted above, weak paternalism operates where, for whatever reason, the individual is not competent to make decisions in their own best interests for a variety of reasons. In the case of children and adolescents, there is a significant scholarship within the philosophy and ethics of sports (McNamee, 2009;Russell, 2007), and we have seen how consensus statements have taken the stance that the physician's view should be authoritative. We take a similar view, based upon the presumption of greater confidence in the competence of the physician rather than players' motivations and coaches' potential conflicting interests in player welfare and sporting success. ...
... As noted above, weak paternalism operates where, for whatever reason, the individual is not competent to make decisions in their own best interests for a variety of reasons. In the case of children and adolescents, there is a significant scholarship within the philosophy and ethics of sports (McNamee, 2009;Russell, 2007), and we have seen how consensus statements have taken the stance that the physician's view should be authoritative. We take a similar view, based upon the presumption of greater confidence in the competence of the physician rather than players' motivations and coaches' potential conflicting interests in player welfare and sporting success. ...
Article
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The issue of concussion in sport is a matter of global public interest that is currently under dispute by educational , legal, and medical professionals and scientists. In this article we discuss the problem from philosophical, bioethical, and sports ethical perspectives. We articulate conceptual differences in approaches to definition and therefore diagnosis of concussion. We critically review similarities and differences in the leading consensus statements that guide the treatment of concussion diagnosis and treatment in sports. We then present a series of ethical problems including issues that relate to paternalistic intervention in the lives of athletes in order to prevent harm to athletes, conflicting and competing interests, and confidentiality.
... Such a perfectionism is also likely to systematically overlook positive adaptations to adversity that do not involve full realization of, or recovery of previous, capacities for excellence. A separate consideration is the phenomenon, probably more common today, of trying to shield ourselves, especially children, from setbacks, failures, and disappointments (Unger 2007, Russell 2007. Trying to shelter individuals from any need to be resilient is futile and counterproductive, but such efforts have the effect of hiding the importance of this virtue and the need to foster it. ...
Article
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This paper argues that human psychological resilience is a central virtue in sport and in human life generally. Despite its importance, it is an overlooked virtue in philosophy of sport and classical and contemporary virtue theory. The phenomenon of human resilience has received a great deal of attention recently in other quarters, however. There is a large and instructive empirical psychological literature on resilience, but connections to virtue theory are rarely drawn and there is no agreement about what the concept refers to. This paper attempts to clarify the concept of resilience and explain how it fits into and supports a traditional Aristotelian conception of virtue. It shows how resilience figures centrally in sport and can extend and enrich our understanding of virtue and success in sport and of sport's internal values. The investigations into the nature of resilience in sport can also help us to understand better sport's contributions to human culture and well-being.
... One of the most important social functions of sports competition is enabling the children to learn proper social communication (Light, 2010). During competitive sports, children can learn patterns of social cooperation without exceeding certain limits of aggression (Russell, 2007). Playing with other children is perhaps the major context for learning social skills, and it is regarded as an important factor in social integration. ...
Article
Sports competition can play an important role for children because it contributes to developmental outcomes for a healthy lifestyle. Through sports competition, children can learn about physical, social, and cognitive skills. Sports competition can be either positive or negative in terms of development, depending on how experiences are perceived by children and how competitions is designed. This article examines derivative, adjustive, generative, and maladaptive approaches to sports to determine the positive and negative effects on the development of children. Competition in sports related to development in four principal ways: sports competition was a result of development, it can be a respite from developmental pressure, it was a source of development, and it can be detrimental to development. This article discussed the optimal youth competitive sports program after the positive and negative aspects of human development for children were considered. The influence of coaches and family members was important to children’s development and transforms the social, psychological, and emotional benefits that children receive through sports competition.
... This is not to say that it is possible or morally necessary to completely eliminate all sport-related risks, but tackle football, as it is currently played at the junior level, puts youth athletes at risk of numerous types of injuries, among the most serious being head trauma that can have lasting negative effects on a player's health and development. Arguably, some risk is beneficial to a child's development, and the risks of sport may be counted among those that can develop courage, judgment, a healthy appreciation of danger and risk, and provide valuable insights and life lessons to the developing child (Russell 2007). The concern about brain injuries is that they may, uniquely and by their nature, impair the healthy development of youth athletes and impede important educational goals. ...
Article
Postmortem research on the brains of American tackle football players has revealed the presence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease caused by repeated head trauma. Repeated concussion is a risk factor for CTE, raising ethical concerns about the long-term effects of concussion on athletes at risk for football-related concussion. Of equal concern is that youth athletes are at increased risk for lasting neurocognitive and developmental deficits that can result in behavioral disturbances and diminished academic performance. In this article, we consider evidence of the effects of concussion in youth athletes, and discuss ethical duties to youth athletes and how these duties might be satisfied, given the intrinsic risks of football. Finally, we evaluate potential strategies for reducing concussions in junior football, and recommend the optimal strategy for reducing brain injury to an acceptable level while still making available the benefits of football participation for youth athletes.
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In this paper, I examine the ethical landscape surrounding tackle football, exploring the moral permissibility of the sport and the myriad ethical considerations it entails. This examination comprises the use of an ethical decision-making framework to analyze four key aspects: relevant empirical facts, affected parties, salient moral values/disvalues, and potential options. In pondering these aspects, I identify the ethical conflicts arising from factual disagreements, conflicting interests, and divergent values/disvalues concerning players’ decision to partake in gridiron football. In addition to emphasizing the importance of understanding and addressing such aspects and conflicts to devise potential solutions, I contend that ethical issues related to the permissibility of football ultimately stem from value-related conflicts, highlighting the necessity of examining and reconciling conflicting moral principles.
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While sport is often pursued more for reasons of meaning than morality, philosophers have had far less to say about the former. How are the ends of sport related to meaning and morality? I address the question through the case study of boxing. One reason for this approach is that the moral status of boxing is contested, which makes it an interesting candidate for immoral, meaningful activity. Drawing on Wolf’s hybrid account of meaning in life, I argue that boxing can be a meaningful pursuit insofar as it fosters positive self-transformation and interpersonal connection. I then consider a structural obstacle facing the pursuit of meaning in competitive sport and look at the instructive case study of Tyson Fury. I make use of Setiya’s distinction between telic and atelic ends in order to diagnose the problem. Finally, I address the likely objection that the goals of boxing are either absurd or immoral and, therefore, unsuited to the pursuit of a meaningful life.
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J. S. Russell has argued that it is morally permissible for children to participate in dangerous sports and that much of value can be gained from such participation. He attempts to justify children’s participation in dangerous sport with two arguments, which he calls the common sense view and the uncommon sense view, and I apply the basic reasons given in these general arguments to the specific case of justifying children’s participation in mixed martial arts (MMA). To safeguard against wanton and gratuitous risk of great harm, Russell also includes some basic limitations for children’s participation in dangerous sports, and I use these limitations as a general framework for providing a number of additional constraints to render children’s MMA morally permissible.
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If only indirectly and by comparison with other, supposedly more consequential, social undertakings, sport and athletic commitment continue to be denounced as trivial in contemporary society. Against the backdrop of this abiding trivialization, this paper explores the value found in committing to athletic excellence or, using the terminology of the 2019 National Academy of Kinesiology’s annual conference, in pursuing optimal athletic performance. The author introduces and explains 6 kinds of value found in this commitment and pursuit. While these values can be conceptualized independently, they need not be thought of as mutually exclusive. Not only are the values comparably significant, but they might also overlap and combine in various forms and to different degrees. In some cases, they might develop concurrently. Before introducing the values, the author briefly conceptualizes both optimal performance and sport, because sound analysis depends on conceptual clarity.
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In this paper, we analyze the issue of the elimination of sports with a high risk of brain injury. In particular, we critically examine Angelo Corlett's and Pam Sailors' arguments for the prohibition of football and Nicholas Dixon's claim for the reformation of boxing to eliminate blows to the head. Two elements are the ground of Dixon's and Sailor's arguments: (a) the empirical assumption that there is an essential or causal connection between brain injuries incurred in football and the development of a degenerative brain disease known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), and (b) John Stuart Mill's analysis of autonomy, in particular, his position related to consensual domination (ie voluntary enslavement). In the second section of the paper, we present four arguments to contest the validity of Dixon's and Sailor's assumptions. First, we present autonomy-based arguments for the moral acceptability of consensual domination. Secondly, we argue that the nature of the goods people pursue in their lives might justify their foregoing (degrees of) future autonomy. Thirdly, we argue that Mill´s argument against consensual domination draws on ambiguous and arbitrary distinctions. Fourth, we highlight the lack of consensus and empirical evidence regarding CTE arising from brain injuries in sport. We conclude that the proposals from reforming or eliminating sports with high risks of brain injuries are at present not well founded. Might a ban on sports with a risk of brain injuries be justified? The moral permissibility or impermissibility of those sports in which harms are caused by brain injury is a recurrent theme in sports and medical ethics
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This article reconsiders the presence and value of danger in outdoor and adventurous activities and sports in safety-conscious societies, especially in relation to the education of children and youth. Based on an original analysis of the relation between the concepts of ‘risk’ and ‘danger’, we offer an account of the relation between challenge, adventure, risk and danger, and emphasise the importance of teaching risk recognition, risk assessment, risk management and risk avoidance to children and youth, without the necessity of exposing them to jeopardy in dangerous situations. Our conclusion is that ‘Safe Danger’ describes what educators should seek, namely: the educational benefits of the challenges set by risk-taking and the demands of risk-facing, including those in adventurous situations, which are obtainable in the absence of significant danger, and which contribute to risk education. The educational value of adventurous and outdoor pursuits lies elsewhere than in the opportunities that they present for danger-facing, for example in their promotion of self-reliance, confidence, ability to team-work, and especially in their promotion of risk education, as an integral aspect of everyday life planning, as preparation for the day’s adventurous challenges, and as an instrument of task completion.
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The debate between advocates of a primary-goods focused approach to justice and advocates of a capabilities focused approach has been conducted without much explicit attention to how the perspective of children should be represented and interpreted. The objective of this paper is to make some modest progress toward remedying this neglect. The principal conclusion I reach is that neither the Rawlsian primary goods approach nor the capabilities approach provides a fully satisfactory theoretical framework for addressing the full range of children's interests with which justice should be concerned. Moreover, the shortcomings of both approaches are located, I suggest, in a common implicit assumption, namely that the human beings with whom justice is concerned are to be conceived primarily as either mature agents capable of assuming responsibility for the ends they adopt and pursue or as potential mature agents. I will argue that children do not comfortably fit the paradigm of agency that plays an animating role in both theories. Although my main aim is to provide a diagnosis of the theoretical limitations of both approaches, I will offer some tentative remarks about what fuller sensitivity to all the relevant interests of children might involve. The analysis I develop highlights limitations that I believe can be detected in both views but I do not want the critical focus of the paper to be interpreted as entailing a wholesale rejection of either Rawlsian theory or the capabilities approach.
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In recent years, Pop Warner, the worlds largest youth football organization, has seen its numbers decline. This decline is due to concerns about new research establishing a link between football and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a debilitating neurodegenerative disease. Hundreds of thousands of parents are now struggling with a difficult ethical issue: should kids play football? Since parents have an obligation to help children develop the capacities required for autonomous choice, the risks posed by football establish a strong presumption against allowing kids to play the game. I consider whether this presumption can be defeated by the arguments for allowing kids to play dangerous sports offered by John Russell in his papers The Value of Dangerous Sport and Children and Dangerous Sport and Recreation. While Russell does not argue that kids should be permitted to play football, and agrees that some sports may be too risky for children, he argues that kids should often be allowed to participate in extraordinarily risky sports. I contend that the reasons given in support of this position fail to defeat the presumption against allowing kids to play football. Thus, in the absence of further argument, or radical changes to the game, children should not play football.
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In this major book Martha Nussbaum, one of the most innovative and influential philosophical voices of our time, proposes a kind of feminism that is genuinely international, argues for an ethical underpinning to all thought about development planning and public policy, and dramatically moves beyond the abstractions of economists and philosophers to embed thought about justice in the concrete reality of the struggles of poor women. Nussbaum argues that international political and economic thought must be sensitive to gender difference as a problem of justice, and that feminist thought must begin to focus on the problems of women in the third world. Taking as her point of departure the predicament of poor women in India, she shows how philosophy should undergird basic constitutional principles that should be respected and implemented by all governments, and used as a comparative measure of quality of life across nations.
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This book brings together and develops some of the most important economic, social, and ethical ideas Sen has explored over the last two decades. It examines the claims of equality in social arrangements, stressing that we should be concerned with people's capabilities rather than either their resources or their welfare. Sen also looks at some types of inequality that have been less systematically studied than those of class or wealth. Available in OSO: http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/content/economicsfinance/0198289286/toc.html
A Child's Right to an Open Future In Whose Child? Parental Rights, Parental Authority and State Power
  • Feinberg
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